Rereading the complete Father Brown mysteries of GK Chesterton

[cimorene]

I've read the Father Brown mysteries before, but not all at once originally, and I remember my original impression was kind of...

1. Whoa, even more of the YIKES 'of his time' (1910-1930s) than I'm used to in English books of a certain era. Racism & co. associated with the British Empire and colonialism and the Victorian era (although written immediately after it);


2. A peculiar quality where the mysteries themselves aren't mysteries that any sane person could have solved, and don't attempt to leave clues that would be soluble; instead they are a bit like Sherlock Holmes, leaving clues simply for you to remember them when the sleuth mentions how he noticed them. They sort of remind me more of, like, Encyclopedia Brown stories than Sherlock Holmes stories, though, in structure. I can't quite pinpoint why that is, although maybe if I felt like rereading Encyclopedia Brown I'd be able to.


3. There's a big religious chip on his shoulder and a lot of Catholic apologetics (and just Christian ones, general, and even just Religion ones), even more than I might have expected given the title.


4. But in spite of that, many of them are entertaining to read.


5. And in addition to that, there's generally like... well... he means well? He seems to mean well.

Well, my memory was pretty accurate, I find, on rereading.

First of all, the religious stuff. The one overarching theme of everything is his intense religious superiority complex. Not only that, though - the fervency of his hate-on for what he seems to earnestly regard as a wave of atheism attempting to brainwash people is bewildering given that he was writing in Britain from, as stated, the 1910s-1930s, where that is simply not true. I can only compare his emotional fervor to that of typical ex-evangelicals against fundamentalism. I know Chesterton was a convert to Catholicism, but it's highly unlikely that he was brought up in a repressive authoritarian atheist environment in Britain in that period! Of course, it's not uncommon for religious reactionaries to indulge in this general species of discourse, claiming that modern western society is being taken over by the devil and that rabid atheists are behind every corner, bullying children and beating dogs. But it's very funny to see that the argument has remained essentially unchanged since a period when I think, statistically speaking, the society in question was still like about... twice as religious, or half as secularized, as it is now, if not more?

In spite of the high rate of accidental racism and other bigotry in these stories - generally in the form of stereotypes and ideas of racial essentialism such as the idea of national character - on the conscious level, the stories are usually anti-racist. The moral of most of the stories with non-white characters is usually that a white bad actor is trying to take advantage of other white people's racism to divert blame onto a non-white character. Yet I don't think there's a single one of these stories where the non-white characters who turned out to be completely innocent were not also the subject of apparently earnest racist speeches from the hero.

But anyway, here are my favorite GK CHESTERTON, NO! moments. I've been collecting them.

• For he was a man who drank and bathed in colours, who indulged his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect of form—even of good form. This it was that had turned his genius so wholly to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to teach. [...] In short (to put the matter from the more common point of view), he dealt much in eastern heavens, rather worse than most western hells; in eastern monarchs, whom we might possibly call maniacs;



• "It's very beautiful," said the priest in a low, dreaming voice; "the colours are very beautiful. But it's the wrong shape."
  
  "What for?" asked Flambeau, staring.
  
  "For anything. It's the wrong shape in the abstract. Don't you ever feel that about Eastern art? The colours are intoxicatingly lovely; but the shapes are mean and bad—deliberately mean and bad. I have seen wicked things in a Turkey carpet."
  
  "Mon Dieu!" cried Flambeau, laughing.
  
  "They are letters and symbols in a language I don't know; but I know they stand for evil words," went on the priest, his voice growing lower and lower. "The lines go wrong on purpose—like serpents doubling to escape."
  



• "When that Indian spoke to us," went on Brown in a conversational undertone, "I had a sort of vision, a vision of him and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first he said 'I want nothing,' it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself away. Then he said again, 'I want nothing,' and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the third time, 'I want nothing,' he said it with blazing eyes. And I knew that he meant literally what he said; that nothing was his desire and his home; that he was weary for nothing as for wine; that annihilation, the mere destruction of everything or anything——"



• They were both atheists, with a depressing fixity of outlook but great mobility of exposition.



• His military moustache and the carriage of his shoulders showed him a soldier, but he had a pair of those peculiar frank and piercing blue eyes which are more common in sailors.



• Dr. Oliver Oman, who, though a scientific man of a somewhat bitter type, was enthusiastic for music, and would go even to church to get it.



• But Father Brown had to tell himself sharply that one should be in charity even with those who wax their pointed beards, who have small gloved hands, and who speak with perfectly modulated voices.



• Now I'm bound to say that the secretary is something of a busybody. He's one of those hot and headlong people whose warmth of temperament has unfortunately turned mostly to pugnacity and bristling suspicion; to distrusting people instead of to trusting them. That sort of red-haired red-hot fellow is always either universally credulous or universally incredulous; and sometimes both. He was not only a Jack-of-all-trades, but he knew better than all tradesmen.



• [H]er eyes had that bright and rather prominent appearance which belongs to the eyes of ladies who ask questions at political meetings.



• "I've scarcely ever met a criminal who philosophized at all, who didn't philosophize along those lines of orientalism and recurrence and reincarnation, and the wheel of destiny and the serpent biting its own tail. I have found merely in practice that there is a curse on the servants of that serpent; on their belly shall they go and the dust shall they eat; and there was never a blackguard or a profligate born who could not talk that sort of spirituality. It may not be like that in its real religious origins; but here in our working world it is the religion of rascals; and I knew it was a rascal who was speaking."



• "That sort of man may be dripping with gore; but he will always be able to tell you quite sincerely that Buddhism is better than Christianity. Nay, he will tell you quite sincerely that Buddhism is more Christian than Christianity. That alone is enough to throw a hideous and ghastly ray of light on his notion of Christianity."



• He had fair hair and a fine face that might have looked like Shelley, if he had not weakened the chin with a little foreign fringe of beard. Somehow the beard made him look more like a woman; it was as if those few golden hairs were all he could do.



• "[T]here was really some excuse, or at least some cause, for her mad Italian rage. There generally is for mad Italian rages: Latins are logical and have a reason for going mad."



• "Quite so," said Father Brown. "That’s what I object to. I was just going to say that if it’s all a fraud, I don’t mind it so much. It can’t be much more of a fraud than most things at fancy bazaars; and there, in a way, it’s a sort of practical joke. But if it’s a religion and reveals spiritual truths—then it’s all as false as hell and I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole."
  
  "That is something of a paradox," said Hardcastle, with a smile.
  
  "I wonder what a paradox is," remarked the priest in a ruminant manner. "It seems to me obvious enough. I suppose it wouldn’t do very much harm if somebody dressed up as a German spy and pretended to have told all sorts of lies to the Germans. But if a man is trading in the truth with the Germans—well! So I think if a fortune-teller is trading in truth like that——"
  
  "You really think," began Hardcastle grimly.
  
  "Yes," said the other; "I think he is trading with the enemy."

Comments

[conuly]

I can't quite pinpoint why that is, although maybe if I felt like rereading Encyclopedia Brown I'd be able to.

I've never read Father Brown, but I have read Encyclopedia Brown, and I remember vividly one mystery that hinged on the person who cheated in the race claiming he ran past an orchestra while they were playing "The Eyes of Texas". Encyclopedia said this proved he'd only read the program rather than running past them because any normal person would call that song "I've Been Working on the Railroad", to which I say that Encyclopedia clearly was not raised by a man from Texas*.

Other people's disillusion with Encyclopedia Brown stems from such classics as "nobody would ever reach into their right pocket with their left hand for any reason" and "nobody who likes hot dogs eats them this way". Is this the sort of thing you mean?

* Real tangent time, one time when my mother was recently married she happened across a movie on TV about ranchers in Texas, or maybe there was oil, or maybe it was both. Anyway, through all their tribulations every once in a while the background music would play "I've Been Working on the Railroad", which was strange because there definitely was no railroad. There were ranches and big skies and oil rigs and people urging their family members not to give up the land - but a distinct lack of railroads.

Several years later my father was washing the dishes and singing The Eyes of Texas and all of a sudden it all made sense to her.

[cimorene]

Other people's disillusion with Encyclopedia Brown stems from such classics as "nobody would ever reach into their right pocket with their left hand for any reason" and "nobody who likes hot dogs eats them this way". Is this the sort of thing you mean?

Yes! Yes, that's exactly the kind of clue that usually solves everything for Father Brown - generalizing some universal principle that isn't universal at all and frequently doesn't make sense.

I did not know that was the title of that song, but that anecdote is funny enough that I'll probably remember it in future.

[conuly]

I think Railroad came first. The other set of lyrics are… uninspired.

“The eyes of Texas are upon you / all the livelong day / The eyes of Texas are upon you / you cannot get away! “

Honestly, it makes Texas out to be a bigger snoop than Santa.

Oh, Dear

[stranger]

Yes, the "GKC, NO" samples are indeed tiresome prejudices, though they could make character sense in context. Sadly, by all accounts people really thought like that. People are still thinking (or at least acting) like that, as certain segments of U.S. politics make clear. :(

I recall Encyclopedia Brown from many decades ago, so this may be skewed, but my memory was that each short story was essentially just a parade of clues (some not initially obvious, but definitely there in the text) that Brown summed up at the end to support his deductions. They're overt puzzle stories. In retrospect, maybe I recall the solutions that made sense more than the ones that didn't.

Holmes stories have rather more narrative, action and character, to obfuscate the import of the clues that are there. It's all about the mystery, in the end, but you go around a lot more corners to get there.

Re: Oh, Dear

[cimorene]

Yeah, that sounds correct; I remember that the stories are very short and summary-focused. But that isn't the similarity they have with Father Brown stories, which are often begun before anybody even knows there is a mystery, since the sleuth is not a detective and hence isn't only called in after somebody wants help. It's more to do with the nature of the clues and summings-up of the mystery. I now think, after a comment above, that it's the fact that a lot of the clues are so bogus: they're generalizations that aren't actually true, or that don't in fact logically lead to what they are asserted to lead to, that sort of thing.

[sporky_rat]

Paisley is fine as long as it's not constantly moving, animated paisley.

That period of the late nineties still haunts me.

[cimorene]

I feel sure I would remember if I'd seen THAT.

[oracne]

I wonder if Encyclopedia Brown is related to Father Brown? ...I think it's time to get offline for a bit....

[cimorene]

I thought of that too. The only canonically appearing relative was a niece, but there could be some nephews in America...

[oracne]

I am resisting hunting on Ao3.